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Cari Searcy

Imagine sitting at your critically ill son’s bedside with your wife, watching the life ebb from the infant’s tiny body. Your baby is losing weight and desperately needs a feeding tube to sustain him until he receives an open-heart surgery, his only hope for survival, that is still two weeks away.

Your wife, upset and emotional, is unable to learn how to insert the tube. She is bullied by nurses and becomes hysterical so you step in and volunteer to take her place. But, because you are also a woman and living in a state with arcane marriage and adoption laws, you are denied. You are told, “You are not his mother.”

Cari Searcy and Kim McKeand of Mobile, Alabama, didn’t have to imagine this nightmare, because they had to live it. First they were stunned, then they were furious. And then they waged war against those arcane laws and changed history when they won.

And last month, on 24 July, Cari Searcy, whose name might ring a bell, and her wife Kim McKeand, went before Visiting Judge James Reid―sitting in for the infamous Probate JudgeDon Davis―to receive approval for an intrafamily adoption. Khaya’s mothers are now both legally his mothers.

And this is why. Stand, speak, fight, win. Love. Live.

For all these years of fighting, Cari and Kim and Khaya now begin their adventure anew. It is our honor to bear witness, that this family should triumph over harmful and hateful Alabama “values”.

This is what Attorney General Luther Strange sued to stop. This is what even Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas could see when he conceded the inevitability of marriage equalityα. This is why Chief Justice Roy Moore would refuse the U.S. Constitution, and Probate Judge Don Davis choose derelection. This is why Alabama would disgrace itself.

This family.

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Image note: Cari Searcy and Kim McKeand, with son Khaya, in court at Mobile, Alabama, 24 July 2015, after Visiting Judge James Reid approved an intrafamily adoption petition. Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange protested the Searcy-McKeand marriage all the way to the United States Supreme Court. (Detail of photo from Let Love Define Family)

α From Justice Thomas’ dissent in Strange v. Searcy, in which the Court majority denied the State of Alabama stay against recognizing the same-sex marriage of Cari Searcy and Kim McKeand: “In this case, the Court refuses even to grant a temporary stay when it will resolve the issue at hand in several months.”

Amid battles that have erupted over states banning local anti-discrimination ordinances and moving forward on “religious liberties” laws targeting lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people — seemingly catching some LGBT activists off-guard — Phyllis Schlafly has a message for the LGBT community: Don’t believe for a minute that the Supreme Court’s decision in June on marriage equality, no matter how positive, will diminish the crusade against LGBT equality. In fact, she says, it will only serve to reinvigorate the anti-gay movement ....

.... “The gays have their argument about inevitability,” the 90-year-old author of 25 books told me in an interview for SiriusXM Progress at this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference in National Harbor, Maryland, over the weekend, during a book-signing including her new book, “Who Killed the American Family?”

“I don’t think that’s so,” Schlafly continued with a smile, rejecting the “inevitability” argument. “I’m extremely disappointed that the Republican Party, the conservative movement, even the Democratic Party and the churches, have been saying, ‘Well soon the court will decide, and that will be it.’ Well, a lot of people thought that about Roe v. Wade, and we’ve seen the whole abortion movement turned around in the last ten years.”

Suffice to say, madam, we look forward to it. You know where to find us; we’ll be here.

Perhaps “Yellowhammer State” is the wrong nickname for Alabama, which seems determined to identify according to its titanic yellow streak.

This is what cowards do:

Less than two weeks after a federal judge ordered him to comply with her ruling legalizing same-sex marriage, Mobile County’s probate judge has indicated he will not process a couple’s adoption petition until after the Supreme Court decides another case.

That has put Cari Searcy’s second-parent adoption in legal limbo and prompted her lawyers to filed a new lawsuit Tuesday in federal court asking for an order prohibiting Probate Judge Don Davis from “directly or indirectly” enforcing the state’s same-sex marriage ban that the federal judge struck down last month.

It was Searcy’s inability to adopt the boy that she and spouse Kim McKeand have raised since birth that prompted them to challenge Alabama’s ban on same-sex marriage.

David Kennedy, one of the couple’s lawyers, expressed exasperation at Davis’ decision. He noted that the U.S. Supreme Court allowed U.S. District Judge Callie V.S. “Ginny” Granade’s order to take effect and that Granade handed down a separate order on Feb. 13 specifically instructing Davis to stop enforcing the gay marriage ban.

And if this isn’t enough of an indictment of the low character of Alabama, well, they do go on:

U.S. Sen. Richard Shelby said today he has a traditional view of marriage and he understands Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore’s resistance to the state’s acceptance of same-sex marriage.

“I’ve always believed and still believe that marriage should be between a man and a woman. I voted on that in the U.S. Senate,” Shelby, a Republican from Tuscaloosa, said after speaking this morning to the Montgomery Area Chamber of Commerce.

We should not be surprised. Neither Shelby’s ignorance nor cheap hatred reflects anything unusual about what goes on in Alabama. Consider that by Shelby’s logic―

“We had a federal district court in Mobile make a ruling, then they had a ruling from the 11th Circuit, but the Supreme Court hasn’t. So I think that’s the point [Roy Moore is] making, that it’s not a final ruling, as I understand it,” Shelby said.

―nobody anywhere needs obey a court until they reach the Supreme Court and lose. And if that sounds strange, it is. But it’s also the result of applying Shelby’s particular argument to general consideration. In a more mundane consideration, it is also worth pointing out that Sen. Shelby is wrong; polling shows Americans support marriage equality. But, hey, this is Alabama, so what need have they for reality or basic decency, right? Just say whatever the hell they want, because, you know, they’re from Alabama, which means they’re automatically correct even when reality disagrees.

Really. Alabama. They keep electing these bigots; at some point those votes start to reflect on the character of the state, and it is not what we might call a flattering picture.